Tag Archives: satellite tags

This year’s research project tracing the movements of Southern
Resident killer whales has ended after 96 days of tracking L-84, a
25-year-old male named Nyssa.

Nyssa (L-84) and his entourage
traveled north into Canadian waters the first week of May. //
NOAA map

It was the longest period of tracking among the Southern
Residents since the satellite-tagging studies began in 2012. The
transmitter carried by L-84 lasted three days longer than a similar
deployment on K-25 in 2013. The satellite tags, which are attached
to the dorsal fins of the whales with darts, often detach after
about a month.

The nice thing about this year’s study is that it covered the
entire month of April and much of May, according to Brad Hanson,
project supervisor for NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
That tells the researchers something about the movement of the
whales later in the year than previous deployments have
revealed.

A satellite tag on J-27 (Blackberry) in late December extended
the total tracking period to more than four months.

Looking back through the
tracking maps since February, it is clear that L-84 and his
entourage have spent much of their time moving up and down the
Washington and Oregon coasts. They seem to favor hanging out near
the mouth of the Columbia River. On a few occasions, they have
ventured into Northern California.

The whales quickly returned to
the U.S., ending the tracking project when the satellite tag fell
off near the Columbia River. // NOAA
map

On May 6, they took their only jaunt north into Canadian waters,
reaching Estavan Point (halfway up Vancouver Island) two days
later. They continued north another day, nearly reaching Brooks
Peninsula (about three-fourths up Vancouver Island) on May 9. Then
they headed back south, ending this year’s tracking program near
the Columbia River.

Just before the satellite tag fell off, biologists from Cascadia
Research Collective caught up with the whales on May 21 south of
the Columbia River. The researchers noticed that the tag was
loosening, and no further satellite signals were picked up.

The tracking studies, combined with efforts to collect samples
of feces and fish remains, are designed to identify where the
whales are spending their time in winter months and what they are
finding to eat when salmon are more scarce. All of this could lead
to a major expansion of their designated “critical habitat” and
increased protections in coastal waters. As of now, critical
habitat for the whales does not extend into the ocean, and NOAA has
concluded that more information is needed before changing the
designated protection area.

Within the next month or so, all three Southern Resident pods
should head into Puget Sound, congregating in the San Juan Islands,
as chinook salmon return to Canada’s Fraser River and other streams
in the Salish Sea.

Meanwhile, J pod seems to be hanging out in waters around the
San Juans, possibly waiting for the other pods to show up. Plenty
of observers have been filing some great reports and related photos
with
Orca Network.

That link also includes recent reports of seal-eating transient
killer whales that have traveled as far south as the
Bremerton-Seattle area, perhaps farther. A few humpback whales have
been sighted in northern Puget Sound.

L-84, a 25-year-old male orca named Nyssa, has been carrying a
satellite transmitter for more than two months now, allowing
researchers to track the movements of Nyssa and any whales
traveling with him.

Typical of recent travels by
L-84 and his entourage, the whales traveled north and south of the
Columbia River from April 14 to 20. // NOAA
map

Nyssa, the last survivor of his immediate family, tends to stay
around L-54, a 38-year-old female named Ino, and Ino’s two
offspring, L-108 (Coho) and L-117 (Keta). Often, other members of L
pod are with him, and sometimes K pod has been around as well,
according to observers.

The satellite tracking is part of an effort to learn more about
the three pods of Southern Resident killer whales, which are listed
as “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. That means they
are headed for extinction without changes that increase their rate
of survival.

The Navy, which has long been training off the West Coast, has
been supporting some of the research in hopes of finding ways to
reduce inadvertent harm from its active training in that area,
officials say.

Over the past week, the whales
moved well offshore near Grays Harbor, then returned to waters at
the entrance of the Columbia River. // NOAA
map

Since L-84 was tagged on Feb. 17, the whales have been generally
traveling up and down the Washington and Oregon coasts. At various
times, researchers — including biologists from Cascadia Research —
have been able to get close enough to collect fecal samples from
the whales and scales from fish they are eating. The goal is to
determine their prey selection at this time of year. Chinook salmon
are their fish of choice, but they will eat other species as
well.

Winter storms and waves create challenging conditions to study
the whales, but the satellite-tagging program has helped
researchers find them, said Brad Hanson, who is leading the study
for NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Brad told me that he is thrilled that the satellite tag on L-84
has remained in operation so long, allowing more and more data to
be collected. Satellite tags are designed to fall off after a time,
and the compact batteries will eventually run out of juice.

“This is the latest (in the season) that we have had a tag on a
Southern Resident,” Brad said. “Who knows how long it will last?
The battery will probably make it until the end of May, and the
attachment looked good the last anyone saw the tag.”

The research is not just about figuring out where the whales
travel, Brad said. It is about finding out which areas are
important to them.

While tracking the whales by satellite, the research is being
expanded with the use of acoustic recording devices deployed in key
locations along the coast. The goal is to find ways to track the
whales with less intrusion. But how does one know where they are
located during periods when the whales go silent — sometimes for
days at a time? Those are the kind of questions that researchers
hope to answer by correlating the acoustic and satellite data
together, Brad said.

With Navy funding, 17 recorders are now deployed along the
coast, including one recorder many miles offshore to pick up whales
that get out into the deep ocean.

“We have certainly reduced a lot of the mystery,” Brad said.
“The main issue — and what the Navy is interested in — is how they
mitigate for marine mammal presence.”

Knowing that killer whales can be silent, the Navy has largely
relied on visual sightings to determine the presence of the
animals. During high waves, that may not be a reliable method of
detection. The answer, based on tracking the whales, could be to
move the training operations farther offshore — beyond the
continental shelf, since the Southern Residents appear to rarely go
out that far.

The Southern Residents are among the most studied marine mammals
in the world, yet it is not entirely clear why their population is
not recovering. An upcoming effort will begin to look at whether
new information about the health condition of the whales can be
teased out of existing fecal and biopsy samples or if new methods
of study are needed to assess their health.

Meanwhile, raw data from various studies continue to pour in,
challenging NOAA researchers to focus on specific questions,
complete their analyses and share the findings in scientific
reports. According to Brad, ongoing staff cutbacks makes that final
step even harder than it has been in the past.

With less than a week remaining on the 21-day research cruise,
Brad Hanson and company sighted a newborn orca in L pod swimming in
coastal waters off Westport on Wednesday. The mother appears to be
L-94, a 20-year-old female named Calypso.

A newborn orca swims with its
mother L-94, Calypso, near the entrance to Grays Harbor on the
Washington Coast. The research vessel Bell M. Shimada can be seen
in the background.NOAA photo by Candice Emmons

The new calf is the third to be born to Southern Residents since
Christmas. That’s a nice turnaround, considering that no babies
were born in 2013 and 2014, except for the one born right at the
end of last year. Still, at least one more calf is needed to
surpass even the annual average over the past 10 years. To keep
this in perspective, six calves were born in 2010, though not all
survived.

“It is encouraging to see this (new calf), particularly in L
pod,” Brad told me in a phone call yesterday afternoon. Hanson is a
senior researcher for NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science
Center.

The current research cruise also has been among the most
exciting and productive since the effort began in 2004, he said.
The research vessel Bell M. Shimada was able to follow J pod up
into Canada’s Strait of Georgia before switching attention to K and
a portion of L pod, which then traveled down the coast of
Washington past the Columbia River into Central Oregon. Satellite
tags attached to males in the two groups helped the research team
stay with the animals. In past years, the whales have not always
been easy to find for observation and tracking.

So far, more fecal and scale samples were collected in 2013 than
this year, but that could still be surpassed. This was the first
time that all three pods have been observed in one year, and it was
the first time that researchers saw two groups of L pod whales
coming together in the open ocean.

“Both 2013 and this cruise were extremely productive,” Brad told
me. “We have been able to observe variability between pods as well
as variability between years.”

As I mentioned in
Water Ways on Tuesday, learning where the whales travel in
winter and what they are eating are essential elements for
extending legal protections to the coast as part of a new critical
habitat designation for the Southern Residents.

With unusually good weather and sea conditions for February, the
researchers have learned a great deal about the whales as well as
the conditions in which they live — including the presence of sea
birds and other marine life, the abundance of plankton and the
general oceanographic conditions, Brad noted.

“I would rather be lucky than good any day,” he said of the
fortuitous conditions that have made the trip so successful. See
NOAA’s
Facebook page for his latest written notes.

The two groups of L-pod whales apparently came together early
Wednesday about 15 miles off the coast near Westport. The whales
were tightly grouped together when Hanson and his crew approached
in a small Zodiac work boat.

“It looked like a bunch of females were all gathered up when we
saw this calf pop up,” Brad said. “It is really exciting. The calf
looks great.”

The young animal had the familiar orange tint of a newborn with
apparent fetal folds, which are folds of skin left from being in
the womb. It was probably no more than two days old and very
energetic, Brad said.

Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research said the baby in L
pod might not have been spotted so early in the year were it not of
the research cruise. L pod usually returns to Puget Sound in April
or May.

“Seeing these calves is great, but the question is: Will they
make it into summer,” Ken said in an interview with Tristan
Baurick, a reporter with the
Kitsap Sun (subscription).

Without winter observations, many orcas born during those months
— especially whales in K or L pods — might never be known, since
the mortality of young orcas is believed to be high.

As of this afternoon, the research vessel Shimada was off the
Long Beach Peninsula north of the Columbia River (presumably with
the whales). This is the general area where the orcas and their
observers have been moving about for the past day or so.

For the first time, researchers are tracking by satellite a
group of “tropical oceanic” killer whales, a type rarely seen and
almost a complete mystery to scientists.

Observers with Cascadia
Research locate a group of four tropical oceanic killer whales,
including this male, near Hawaii. They were able to attach
satellite tags to three of them.Photo by Aliza Milette

Researchers from Olympia-based Cascadia Research were in Hawaii,
on the final day of a 15-day research cruise to study marine
mammals, when they encountered four killer whales offshore from
Kona. They were the type of orca known to roam the open ocean, but
rarely seen by human observers.

In fact, in 14 years of research work in Hawaii, Cascadia’s
Robin Baird said he has encountered these tropical killer whales
only three times
twice before. Others have seen them on occasion, but sightings are
few and far between.

This time, on Nov. 1, Baird’s crew was able to obtain samples of
skin for genetic work, which will help determine how closely these
whales are related to other orcas throughout the world. The crew
also attached satellite transmitters to three of the four
whales.

Satellite tracks show the
orcas moving north and west over the past two weeks. (Click to
enlarge image.)Map by Cascadia Research

Two of the transmitters are still transmitting nearly two weeks
later, and Baird hopes at least one will continue working for
several more weeks. In warmer waters, the barbed “tags” tend to
fall off sooner than in Northwest waters, Robin told me. As you can
see from the map, the whales first moved west, then north, then
west again. As of the latest plot this morning, they were west and
slightly south of Kauai.

By coincidence, two underwater photographers captured video and
still photos of these killer whales around the time the Cascadia
crew was in the area off Kona. Deron Verbeck and Julie Steelman
told KHON-TV that the experience was the pinnacle of their career.
(See video below.)

Although Nov. 1 was the last official day of the Cascadia
cruise, researcher Russ Andrews and several others went back out on
Saturday to find the four killer whales. They spotted three other
orcas with them. During the outing, they observed predation on a
thresher shark, something that photographer Verbeck also
reported.

Among the tropical oceanic
killer whales near Hawaii, this adult female swims with a young
whale. Notice the dark coloration of the saddle patch near the
dorsal fin.Photo by Robin W. Baird

These tropical oceanic killer whales are smaller than the
familiar resident and transient killer whales of the Northwest,
Robin Baird explained. Instead of a white “saddle patch” near the
dorsal fin, these animals have a gray, almost black patch that is
difficult to see.

These are not the “offshore” killer whales that roam miles of
the West Coast, but generally stay on or near the continental
shelf, Robin told me. Still, it will be interesting to see if the
tropical oceanic orcas are closer genetically to the offshores,
which are known to eat sharks.

We do know the Southern Resident orcas, which frequent Puget
Sound, specialize in eating salmon, particularly chinook. But Robin
says whales feeding in the open ocean probably don’t encounter
enough of any one prey type to be so specialized. Considered
generalists, they have been known to eat squid, sharks, dolphins
and occasionally larger whales.

Some of the killer whales
seen off Hawaii had remoras, also called sucker fish, attached to
them. Experts say this is not unusual for tropical marine
mammals.Photo by Annie M. Gorgone

Robin says little is known about how they group together,
because the number of photo identifications is small. Generally,
the groups are five or less. The groups are likely to be families,
including a female and all her offspring. This is the same type of
matriarchal society found in other orca groups, although in some
orca societies — such Southern Residents — one matriline often
joins with others.

Robin says just about everything learned about their travels is
new, “from short-term movement rates, habitat use, and — if the
tags stay on for a while — how often they may visit island-habitats
(and) whether they cross international boundaries.”

In addition to Robin Baird and Russ Andrews, the research crew
on the trip included Daniel Webster, Annie Douglas and Annie
Gorgone, all from Cascadia; Amy Van Cise from Scripps Institution
of Oceanography and several volunteers.

Even before the killer whale encounter, the cruise was
considered successful, Robin said. Twelve species of marine mammals
were encountered, and satellite tags were deployed on six species,
now being tracked. More than 40,000 photographs were taken, some of
which are shown on
Cascadia’s Facebook page or the project
page on Cascadia’s website.

A research team led by Brad Hanson of NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries
Science Center has been tracking K and L pods off the coast of
Oregon and California, most recently offshore of Washington’s
Willapa Bay.

Satellite transmissions
from two killer whales, K-25 and L-88, show their pods crossing the
Columbia River this morning.Map by Robin Baird with NOAA data

The team left Newport, Ore., on Friday aboard the 209-foot
research vessel Bell M. Shimada. The crew caught up with K pod the
following day with the help of a satellite transmitter attached to
K-25, according to reports. Most if not all of L pod was seen
swimming with the K pod whales near Cape Blanco, off the southern
coast of Oregon.

The research team attached a new satellite tag to L-88, a
20-year-old male named Wave Walker. The new tag will provide
another method of following the whales if the tag attached to K-25
should fall off, as expected sooner or later. It has already stayed
attached for more than two months, about twice the average life of
the satellite tags.

I have not yet connected with Brad Hanson, but I talked to Robin
Baird of Cascadia Research, who has been getting reports from the
crew. Robin told me that the researchers have been able to obtain
multiple fecal and/or fish-scale samples on most of the days they
have been at sea.

Those samples will aid in meeting the primary goal of the
cruise, which is to figure out where the whales are going and what
they are eating during the winter months while away from Puget
Sound.

The satellite tags have allowed the research ship to stay with
the whales even when the weather and their lack of vocalizations
have made them hard to find, Robin said. As a result, this research
cruise has been more efficient than past ones in terms of both time
and fuel.

The research trip, which was scheduled for 21 days, will be cut
in half because of the federal spending cuts related to the
sequester, according to a statement issued by this afternoon by the
Northwest
Fisheries Science Center.

The travels of K-25 over the past two months are shown in an
animation produced by staff at Northwest Fisheries Science
Center. (In my browser, the north and sound portions of the map are
cut off even in full-screen view, but the movements shown are still
amazing.)

The latest report shows both tagged whales swimming offshore of
Willapa Bay on the Washington Coast, having crossed the Columbia
River mouth this morning. The full trip can be viewed on maps
posted on the website called
Southern Resident Killer Whale Satellite Tagging.

Researchers are tracking K
and L pods aboard the NOAA vessel Bell M. Shimada. Click on
the image and insert the ship’s name to view its recent travels.
/NOAA photo

K-25 and presumably all of K pod traveled south all day
yesterday, reaching an area just north of Point Reyes National
Seashore this morning. Will they linger near San Francisco or
continue on to Monterey Bay, the southernmost location ever
reported for the Southern Residents? See map posted on
Orca Network’s Facebook page.
—–

UPDDATE, Jan. 10, 2013

As of this morning, K pod had moved south about 150 miles in 24
hours to an area just north of Fort Bragg, Calif. See the map on
Orca Network’s Facebook page.
—–

UPDATE, Jan. 9, 2013

It appears that K pod has chosen to hang out for awhile outside
of Humboldt Bay near Eureka, Calif., not far from where the pod was
located yesterday via satellite transmissions. Recent movements can
be seen on the map posted on
Orca Network’s Facebook page.

Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research met up with Jeff
Jacobson of Humboldt State University yesterday. Ken spotted from
shore while Jeff took his boat out to photograph the whales,
according to Brad Hanson of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
During the foraging, Jeff was reported to have picked up some fish
scales to identify what the whales were eating, and he may have
gotten some fecal samples as well, according to Brad.

The weather is a little rough to get out on the water today, but
conditions may improve over the next day or so, Brad told me.
—–

In the 10 days that a satellite transmitter has been attached to
K-25, this 21-year-old male killer whale has traveled from South
Kitsap to Northern California.

The latest plot shows K-25
off the California city of Eureka. /NOAA
map

K-25 — and presumably all of K pod — was reported off Eureka,
Calif., this morning. Where the whales will go from there is a
matter of intense interest among orca researchers.

This is the first time that the endangered Southern Residents
have ever been tracked for more than three days in the open ocean,
and researchers have told me they are somewhat surprised at their
pace of travel.

I wrote about the tagging project in
Sunday’s Kitsap Sun, where I briefly touched on the controversy
over whether it is wise to attach these barbed tags to the
endangered orcas. For now, there’s not much more to be said.

For background on the tagging program, check out my previous
stories and blog posts:

UPDATE: Tracking J pod from
6 p.m. Monday to 9 a.m. Thursday, using a satellite tag attached to
J-26. This is the northwest corner of Washington state, with
Vancouver Island to the north.Map: National Marine Fisheries Service

A team of killer whale researchers is tracking J pod by
satellite, after attaching a special radio tag to J-26, a
21-year-old male named “Mike.”

Brad Hanson, who is leading the research team from the Northwest
Fisheries Science Center, said the tagging occurred Monday without
incident as darkness fell over the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

“This is really exciting,” Brad told me today by cell phone from
the NOAA research ship Bell M. Shimada. “This
is something we have been planning on doing for quite a few years
now. Everything worked out to encounter the animals in decent
weather condition.”

The map above shows where the whales have traveled since Monday
afternoon. A
website showing the tracks, including an explanation of the
project, will be updated roughly once a day.

The goal is to learn where the Southern Resident killer whales
go in winter, what they’re eating and why they choose certain areas
to hang out. Until now, these questions could not be answered well,
because winter sightings were fairly limited.

When I talked to Brad about 4 p.m. Wednesday, the Shimada was
towing an acoustic array near Port Angeles, as the researchers
listened for the sounds of killer whales that might venture into
the strait.

J pod was fairly spread out Monday during the tagging operation,
and visibility was low Tuesday during heavy rains. As the whales
headed out into the ocean, the crew decided to stay in the strait
to avoid 20-foot seas and heavy winds off the coast. They could
have followed the whales out, Brad said, but the satellite tag
allows the crew to keep track of their location. In rough seas,
there’s a risk that the research equipment will be damaged.

“Everything is weather-dependent,” Brad said. “Our plan is to
try to catch up with them as soon as we can.”

The goal is to collect fecal samples and fish scales — as the
researchers do in summer when the whales are in the San Juan
Islands.

“That data is extremely valuable in determining the species of
fish,” he said, “and if it’s chinook, what stocks are
important.”

The satellite tagging has been controversial among some
researchers and killer whale advocates, but it was approved
following a study of the potential risks and benefits. See Water
Ways entries from 2010:

The researchers are scheduled to be out with the whales until
March 7.

“We’re keeping our options open,” Brad said. “We will spend as
much time with Js as we can. It looks like we could get one
low-pressure system after another, as is typical for February, but
we might get a break on Friday. Sometimes we’ll get these holes in
the weather system.

“Right now, we’re basically hanging out in the Strait of Juan de
Fuca. If other animals come in, we hope to detect that.”

The tagging permit allows for up to six orcas to be tracked each
year, but nobody expects the number of tagged animals to be close
to that.

Data from the satellite transmitter is relayed to a weather
satellite as it passes over. The information is then transferred to
a processing center that determines the location of the
transmitter. Through the process, the information gets delayed a
few hours.

Also on board the research vessel are seabird biologists and
other experts taking samples of seawater and zooplankton and
collecting basic oceanographic data.

Early in December, I wrote about a plan to attach satellite
transmitters to selected Puget Sound killer whales by shooting
darts into their dorsal fins. At the time, lots of people offered
questions and concerns, but few had taken a strong position. See my
story in the
Kitsap Sun of Dec. 5.

Since then, Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research and
others involved in research, education and advocacy have come out
against the tagging program as currently proposed. On the other
hand, several other researchers are encouraging the federal
government to push the tagging program forward.

After 140 days, marks are
apparent where barbs of satellite tag entered the dorsal fin of the
transient killer whale known as T-30.Click to enlarge

As Ken explained it to me, his bottom line is that the
information gathered by tracking the whales by satellite may not be
worth the injury caused by shooting barbed darts into the whales’
fins. He argues that more follow-up investigation is needed into
the short- and long-term effects of the darts, which eventually
work their way out.

Ken was actually the first to apply for a permit from the
National Marine Fisheries Service to conduct the tagging program
with barbed darts. While not wishing to criticize his fellow
researchers, Balcomb said he had been overly assured that the risk
of injury was exceedingly small.

“I was shown pictures of almost-healed wounds,” Ken told me. “I
was given assurance that there was not an issue. I didn’t even
think about these titanium leaves coming out and leaving a hole
that size (in the fin).”

The current design of the
dart used to attach satellite transmitters to killer
whales.

The turning point was when Ken saw a photo of a transient killer
whale, T-30, who had carried one of the satellite tags. (See the
picture, above right.) He said the long-term scarring was “ugly and
unacceptable to me personally,” and he believed that many whale
supporters also would object.

Ken turned down the approved tagging permit — in part because it
was granted as an amendment to his existing permit for
photographing and identifying orcas as part of his ongoing census.
If unacceptable injury were to occur to the subject whales, he
said, his entire permit could be suspended. That, in turn, would
prevent him from continuing the identification work he has done for
more than 30 years.

Killer whale researchers and advocates are beginning to stir a
little bit in response to a proposal by federal researchers who
want to attach satellite transmitters to the dorsal fins of up to
six Puget Sound killer whales. I reported on the plan in
Sunday’s Kitsap Sun.

The benefits of these satellite tags would be to track the
Southern Residents during winter months when they head out into the
ocean and disappear for periods of time. Knowing where the whales
go is important if people are going to protect their habitat,
according to Brad Hanson, chief investigator with the Northwest
Fisheries Science Center, a research arm of the National Marine
Fisheries Service.

It is conceivable that the whales are visiting some favored
spots for hunting salmon. Finding and protecting important forage
areas from human intrusion could increase the whales’ chances of
long-term survival, officials say.

On the other hand, some observers are raising concerns about
this research project as well as the cumulative effects of all
research on the endangered killer whales. To attach a satellite
transmitter, a boat must get close enough to an orca for an
operator to fire a dart from an air gun. The dart penetrates the
skin on the dorsal fin of the animal.Continue reading →